"My faith? I always go to mass with you; I am not only devout, je suis bigote," rejoined her pupil. Then they entered the church. St. Cecilia's statue, wrought in purest marble, lay revealed beneath the altar on this one day of the year, when her crypt in the catacomb also blooms with flowers. Transfigured by the radiance of silver lamps and myriads of tapers, enshrined in garlands of roses, veiled in clouds of incense, the statue in its niche lent a charm to the gaudy ornaments of the high altar, and all the tinsel draperies extending from column to column along the aisle. On the right a star of light was visible in the miraculous bath-room, with its dim frescoes and ancient pillars; the nuns flitted behind the lattice of their gallery. Mademoiselle, a devout Catholic, knelt at different shrines. Her pupil also knelt. The music, the chant, the glow of those gilded and crimson draperies overhead, seen through the wreaths of incense, all blended. She closed her eyes. She also must pray. For what boon? She smiled suddenly as she murmured: "O God, please send my papa to Rome for Christmas-day." Then she rose to her feet, threaded her way among the ranks of kneeling students, and mademoiselle found her in the court thrusting money into the hands of a group of little boys, the true Trasteverini, with large, liquid eyes. "We shall be late, I fear," admonished the governess, as they finally quitted the church. The young girl, Cecilia Denvil, had insisted on walking to this particular sanctuary in the Trastevere quarter instead of on the Pincian Hill. She was both winning and perverse. At an angle of the crooked streets the window of a shop attracted her attention. Instantly the shrine of St. Cecilia, with its flowers and silver lamps, vanished from her mind. The shop was a mere niche in an old palace wall, brimming over, as it were, into the street, with such odds and ends as a bit of tapestry, a dark picture, a heap of ancient books, a tray of coins and medals, an idol fashioned by Chinese skill. "What is it?" cried Cecilia. "Only an image," replied mademoiselle. The object of Cecilia's interest was a figure on a bracket in the shop window. She darted into the shop, her governess following with a patient smile. What harm could result from her pupil's chatting with the old shop-keeper clad in shabby black, with a rusty satin stock about his neck, and a face tinged yellow by age, as were those of the dilapidated marble busts ranged above his head in the obscurity of the shop? Ay, what harm indeed, mademoiselle? If one could read futurity!